Movie industry 'launching cyber attacks' on pirate websites

Insider in denial-of-service confession

Shares

The managing director of Aiplex Software has admitted that his company has been used to deliver DoS attacks on websites which host illegal torrents.

Girish Kumar of Aiplex Software, which is based in India, explained that his company is hired by the movie industry to deliver copyright takedown notices and if these are ignored, then they bring out the big guns – hitting the site with a DDoS attack.

Speaking to the Age.com, Kumar explained: "Most movies are released on Friday morning at 10am in India. The movie is released in the morning [and] by afternoon it's on the internet.

"What we do is we see all those links on the net. We find the hosting [computer] server and send them a copyright infringement notice because they're not meant to have those links.

"If they don't remove [the link] we send them a second notice and ask them [again] to remove it."

If that doesn't work, then a DDoS attack is sanctioned on the computer servers which is hosting the site, according to Kumar.

Respecting copyright

"How can we put the site down? The only means that we can put the site down is a denial-of-service [attack].

"Basically we have to flood [the site] with millions and millions of requests and put the site down."

Kumar continued: "Generally speaking 95 per cent of providers do remove the content.

"It's only the torrent sites – 20 to 25 per cent of the torrent sites – that do not have respect for any of the copyright notices."

Aiplex Software works mainly for Bollywood studios but one of its clients Fox STAR Studios, part of 20th Century Fox.

Given that DDoS attacks are illegal in the UK - the BBC had its knuckles rapped for its Click programme showing off what a botnet would do - it would be interesting to see if there are other companies in other parts of the world practising this behaviour on behalf of the big-name studios.